In October 2010, Microsoft rolled out an all-new mobile operating system called Windows Phone 7. At the time of review, we loved its refreshing, slick user interface, but were disappointed with the omission of some important features.

Almost 12 months later, the company has released the first major software update to the platform, formerly known as the codename "Mango" but now simply called Windows Phone 7.5. It goes a long way to addressing the concerns we had with the original version. It's still far from perfect, but Windows Phone 7.5 Mango is finally a valid and compelling alternative to competing smartphone platforms: namely Apple's iOS and Google's Android.

Microsoft claims it has added or improved over 500 features in Windows Phone 7.5. While hundreds of these are minor changes that many people won't even notice, there are a few big changes and most of them are positive.

Windows Phone 7.5: Tiles, home screen and main menu

The Windows Phone 7.5 user interface is virtually identical to the original version. Once again its made up of large tiles that can be organised any way you wish; tiles can be "pinned" to the home screen and the default tiles can be removed. However, the live tiles have been given much more freedom in Windows Phone 7.5: Microsoft has added the ability to add extra dynamic content. As an example, a live eBay tile can display how long there is left on an auction you are bidding for, or a Qantas tile can show what time your scheduled flight departs and will even change colour as it gets closer to that time.

A great example of the new found flexibility can be seen using the Evernote app. It allows you to pin an individual note to the home screen rather than the full application. Previously, this sort of customisation and dynamic content was restricted to default Microsoft applications, but Windows Phone 7.5 makes it available to all third-party developers.

Unfortunately, the main menu of Windows Phone 7.5 remains a scrolling list of applications in alphabetical order: if you download lots of apps, the inability for you to organise these will result in a very long list to scroll though. We also wish you could pin an individual setting to the home screen — you can pin the settings menu to the home screen, but you can't pin the Wi-Fi setting as a tile, for example. This would have made it quicker and easier to toggle connections like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

Windows Phone 7.5: People hub, Twitter and LinkedIn

The "People" hub in Windows Phone 7.5 once again groups your contacts from multiple accounts: phone numbers, social networking and e-mail. However, you can now filter contacts from various sources. For example, we only want to see contacts with phone numbers in our People hub so we chose only show our Google contacts. In the previous version of Windows Phone this wasn't possible and we were lumped with our entire Facebook and Windows Live contact list. It left the People hub filled with contacts we hardly ever speak to.

Once you've logged into all your social networking and e-mail accounts, your contacts are populated with information from multiple sources. Tapping on a single contact allows you to read his or her updates from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Windows Live, read your e-mail, text and chat conversations with him or her and view their pictures from any linked social networking services. The idea of this being tied into a single hub negates the need to use multiple apps and makes using Windows Phone 7.5 very efficient.

Microsoft has added Twitter and LinkedIn support through the People Hub, expanding on the already offered Facebook and Windows Live compatibility. The "What's new" view in the People hub allows you to view status updates from all linked accounts, but you can tap "all accounts" to filter updates from one or more sources.

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